Yippee! The 24V power supply (from RS) arrived and it did the trick. It’s a bit of a mess but we managed to control the blinds using a PC: We tested a bit at a time, but ended up with simple Perl script talking to the VIOM via the serial port. The VIOM was set to allow control of two outputs via the serial port (rather than the default of control via the inputs).

Started testing the VIOM today. We tested it out with a door contact - which after a little effort worked fine - and used it to try the blind control/switch that Tracy mentioned in an earlier entry. We tested the Centralis with a voltmeter and it appeared to be doing exactly what we’d hoped. The motor voltage can be controlled through the up, down and stop switches on the front of the unit:

Wow! Very odd! Tracy went to use the Fujitsu that I had tried to get the touchscreen working on. Despite the fact that I only managed to get erratic movement of the mouse, it is now be working!

I’ve now placed a harmony module behind the light switch in the dining room. This was not my first choice of trial location since this room is currently mostly full of boxes - mostly boxes of cables if you ask Tracy but really a/v and computer bits too! However, this was the only switch with the large enough back box in the whole house.

I spent a little time coding a Perl module to hide the details of bots. Had a little trouble with the Net::Jabber modules because I couldn’t find the XML stream socket to add to the select loop of the new module. I might email the author of the Net::Jabber modules to ask about this. After converting the two existing modules, I decided to take a look writing a temperature monitor using the Dallas 1-Wire stuff, that I’d been trying to find time to look at for a few days.

I looked at spread, but I was getting too many errors from the Perl API. So for now I’m going to use Jabber clients for the messaging infrastructure. I wrote two simple clients using the Net::Jabber perl modules. The first was for X10, that reports events and will take commands, and then a second for caller id, that will report calls/rings and will accept commands to send to the modem. These thumbnails link to genuine screenshots - edited only to remove my mobile number.

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about blinds but we also want automated curtains in some of the rooms as they’ll be warmer in winter. As with automated blinds, one company seems to have the automated curtain market sewn up in this country: Silent Gliss. The Silent Gliss autoglide curtains are available from a number of sites including Simply Automate. The most basic Dawn and Dusk model is most suited to automation - you can replace the dawn and dusk sensor with an X10 curtain controller.

We came across one post that mentioned using a Somfy Centralis DC IB for controlling a Somfy DC blind motor. It seems to drive a motor in both directions based on up down and common inputs - seems to be just what we need. The manual didn’t have enough information for us to be confident about this unit, but since it wasn’t a hugely expensive component I decided to buy it and give it a go.

I decided I couldn’t wait for the electricians to do the whole house in a few months time and I really had to know if the quite expensive LW12 2 Wire Dimming Micro Module were as good as I’d hoped. I decided to try it on the switch in the bedroom. Unfortunately the back box was too small - as I later discovered this is true almost all the back boxes in the house.

The motor arrived yesterday, it was just in a box with no further instructions. It has just two wires coming out of it. We know from the online manual that it runs at 12 or 24 vdc. After a bit of experimentation we get it to turn in one direction, but can’t get it to rotate the other way. We think you need to reverse the polarity of the supply to change the direction (which we are doing manually), but it will only go one way.